NORTH DOWNS & BEYOND

Most generations will claim their time and legacy as something of a golden era, particularly when looking back on their formative years. This is particularly true of any group of enthusiasts, whose collective memory will be bathed in sunshine and a shared nostalgia that brings back incidents and events with an almost overbearing clarity - there is happiness in the reconnection but a sadness that it has long gone and cannot be relived. The twitching fraternity of the late 1970s to early 1980s have a genuine claim to be a’golden generation’. The possibilities of what rarity could make it to our shores were being re-written with every passing year; the number of birders that chased rarities was increasing; more rarities were being found and the prowess in bird identification kept increasing. But maybe more relevant was the demographic of the twitching crowd - it was largely made up of young birders, mostly men, in their mid-teens to early thirties. Society was quite different back the...

Just back from a short break in Dorset, and although the optics and camera came along, they played second fiddle to everything else... highlights were up to three Mediterranean Gulls on Charmouth beach, including this adult (above) sporting a red plastic ring (PER3) which suggests that it was ringed as part of a Polish study. Also seen were at least two Dippers (at Lyme Regis (below) and Charmouth). There has been a bit on social media recently about some people's dislike of the shortening of bird's names into an attempt at creating a 'cool birding patois'. I couldn't agree more - you can stick your Spot Shank, Pink Stink, Grot Finch, Yank Start and Spot Flit up your... People also still seem to be congratulating each other on having the ability to spend lots of money, drive hundreds of miles and look at other birder's finds; they still refer to seeing said bird as 'scoring', 'bagging' and 'nailing'; also continue to take selfie...

My short stay at Charmouth is over, and once more I was able to sneak out and get quite a bit of birding under the belt - even 'shopping' excursions to Lyme Regis had 'smash-and-grab' raids carried out on Purple Sandpipers and Dippers. A minimum of four Purple Sandpipers frequented the rocks at the end of the Cobb, and a walk along the river at the edge of town produced a Dipper. It was my good fortune to meet up with Charmouth-based birder and blogger Richard Phillips (you can read all about his finds here).  He kindly gave me a tour of a part of his impressive patch, an area where the river meets the beach, fringed by copse and reeds. It screams out rarity! We spent a most pleasant hour casually birding whilst chatting, the sun warm enough to encourage a good few butterflies onto the wing. Charmouth is blessed with clifftop paths that take you into stunning scenery like this: This is the cliff slump due east of the town. Standing up here I coul...